


I Am Here With You

by Anonymous



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-12 23:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20164237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: On second thought, Lister does have better options around than Arnold J. Rimmer.





	I Am Here With You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vgault](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vgault/gifts).

> For Vgault and the prompt “Lister and Rimmer are in a relationship, but Lister is in love with Kryten” (paraphrased).

“Come now, Listy. Seven in the morning is the perfect time to get up. There’s no need to grumble, we’ve got lots of work to do.”

The pile of blankets on the bed groaned, shifted into a smaller ball, and was still. 

“Chop chop. There’s a checklist. Androids to manage, files to update, that sort of thing. And I’m hungry, you know I get indigestion if I have to eat alone.”

Lister sighed and poked his head out from under the blankets. “Smegging hell, Arnie. You’re not even dressed yet.” 

Arnold Rimmer sat on the edge of their bed in his regulation tanktop and boxers, all wiry energy ready to spring. Space may be a place with no discernible diurnal rhythm, but they still had clocks, and Lister had probably only shut down his antique Gameboy about three hours ago. He knew for a fact Rimmer had slept for much longer than that. If it was after midnight, he always dropped right off after a few minutes of fooling around. The man’s libido was tied to his… sleep reflex. Is there such a thing as a sleep reflex? Whatever the hell you’d call whatever told Rimmer’s brain to shut off at the most unsatisfying times. Kryten would probably know.

Kryten.

He’d picked up that Gameboy to stop thinking so much. Thinking never did anyone any good and to get to his lager he’d have to climb over a sleeping Rimmer, who hadn’t even had the decency to turn off his hard light drive, so Gameboy it was. Recently, he couldn't seem to get away from the same set of thoughts going around in a circle in his head. 

He was lost in space, the last human alive as far as anyone knew, and between the romantic prospects of a dead man, a cat and an android he’d somehow chosen Rimmer. Even a broom would’ve been better than Arnold Judas Rimmer. What had he been thinking? 

He hadn’t been, of course. There had been alcohol involved. One thing had led to another and… here they were, somehow, a ceremony and a couple of kids away from his worst nightmare. The sex wasn’t even any good. I mean, they’d had some high points, and some low points. The point was. There was no point. Just that… even among those limited choices, _Rimmer_?

“All right, you fascist,” he whined as Rimmer poked him on the side with a sharp finger, and threw off his blankets.  
-

“Anything else I could do for you, sir?”

The ‘sir’ had become silent to Lister over the years, except when Kryten put it in a sentence like that. “Quit it. You’re not my servant, all right?”

“No, but...”

“And you broke your programming, remember?”

“Yes, but it makes me comfortable.” There was a touch of whine in Kryten’s voice, and as always, Lister stopped pressing the point. 

“I’m alright. Don’t worry about it.”

Kryten quietly picked up Lister’s dirty plates and laundry while Lister pretended not to notice. He might be all about Android equality but… smeg, it was nice to be taken care of sometimes. 

“I think the bedsheets today as well, Kryten,” said Rimmer, not looking up from his scheduling, and Lister had to suffocate another twinge of guilt. He really was a smegging hypocrite, wasn’t he? 

Lister watched Kryten gather up the bedsheets, then dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Don’t make me do the laundry,” he said to himself. 

“Hm? Kryten’s doing it.”

“No, he’s not.” Lister got up and wrenched the bedsheets and old underwear from Kryten’s metallic hands. “I am.”

\- 

“I liked that shirt,” Rimmer complained later as the sopping wet, ripped and pink-dyed pile of clothes came out of the washer.

\- 

The GELF attack had left the Dwarf with severe damage to twenty-two decks. They’d lost their favourite billiards room and at least one of the cat’s fashion stashes. The cat had run off into the rafters and had been mowring sadly ever since. Not even fish would coax him down. 

“That’s enough, sir,” said Kryten, gently taking the open tuna tin from Lister’s shivering hand. “Mr Cat will be fine in due time. You need to warm up.” Lister had been down in deck thirty after the breach had been sealed, where the absolute ice-cold of open space lingered and bit into his skin even through the protective suit. It wasn’t worth arguing, so he followed Kryten meekly through the corridors and elevators to the spa. 

Not everything about life on the Dwarf was terrible. Endless food, leisure, entertainment, robot helpers, access to officer level luxuries… As Lister sunk into the tingly warm embrace of a scented bath and wiggled his crusty toes, for just a moment he could appreciate that. 

Kryten rubbed his shoulders with a warm blanket. “There. Isn’t that all better?”

Lister gurgled happily in reply. “I could use a...”

“Lager, sir?” One appeared at Lister’s right side.

“Kryten,” he said with feeling, ready to cry. 

“Sir?”

But Lister downed his lager and said nothing. A guy couldn’t just tell his best android friend that he wished he was his boyfriend instead of Arnold J. Rimmer. For one, Rimmer would kill him, and Rimmer himself was smegging unkillable. Secondly, it just wouldn’t be the same between them, would it? Lister could end up ruining everything. 

Some mistakes you just had to live with. 

-

“All right, so… that happened.” 

The Cat sighed, turned on his heel, and skipped off into the depths of the ship. He had already lost interest. The three remaining members of the crew stood looking down at the broken model of the Red Dwarf at their feet. 

“Was that really us down there? Or are we still in there?” Lister asked. They’d found the miniature version of the Dwarf in a knot inside a wormhole, and had been tending it like an ant farm for the past few days until, of course, something bad happened. This time the chain of events leading up to the ship being dropped through a hole between three levels of the ship had been so convoluted that there hardly even was anyone to blame. Or if there was, it was everyone. 

Rimmer peered in with his pocket magnifier. “It’s no use,” said Holly. “They’re all dead.” 

“They’re all dead!” wailed Kryten. “Oh, sir! You’re dead!”

“So what? I’ve been dead for thousands of years,” scoffed Rimmer. 

“I’m not,” said Lister.

“Your mini-self is better off that way anyway,” said Rimmer. “Can you believe you were shagging Kryten? Talk about sinking to a new low.” 

“Better than you,” Lister burst out. “You snore and you always squeeze too hard.”

“Yeah? Well, your feet smell and your dirty talk is frankly uninspired.”

“Yeah? You made a spreadsheet for Valentine’s Day!”

“You _forgot_ Valentine’s Day!”

The two of them stared each other down. “You know what?” Lister said in the end. “Smeg you, smeg the dead me on the other Dwarf, smeg being stuck forever in a rusty tincan in the sky. I’m a grown-up, and I can do what I want.”

Lister stormed off down the hallway. “Yeah, go get pissed on your stupid lager, you robot-shagging slag!” Rimmer yelled after him.

Kryten cleared his throat mildly, a purely social habit, as he produced no saliva unless he needed to. “I’m an android, actually...”

“Shut up!”

Kryten shut up. 

\- 

Lister drifted towards a painful consciousness, and back down into the blessed darkness. But the light persisted. He smelled soap—no—it was that subtle floral scent of Kryten’s wet-wipes. His face felt suspiciously clean, as did his sheets. 

He blinked himself into a blurry, painful wakefulness. “Kryten?”

“I’m here, sir,” said a gentle voice, and Lister could feel someone tucking him in. 

“Ughhgfghh.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Rimmer--”

“He packed his bags and moved into the captain’s quarters.”

“Oh, thank God.”

Kryten shifted. “Sir, I am sorry for your-- that is… for the break-up of your, er...”

Lister sat up, regretted it, and lay back down. “How badly was I?”

“You were upside down in the rafters of the Valhalla Club, singing a song about homosexual vampires.” 

“Right. Friday night, eh?”

“Then you threw up and nearly beaned yourself on viking helmet.” 

“...Kryten?” 

“Yes?”

“Will you... Smeg it. Will you be my rebound? No, be my... I don't know. Just be mine. I… I don’t want to be alone.” He really didn’t. He remembered the ship full of people. He remembered planets of people before that. All gone. Nothing but them and hostile GELFs as far as the mind could stretch. He reached out a hand blindly and grabbed Kryten’s arm. “Please.”

Kryten’s silver face stretched into a mild smile, and he fluffed Lister’s pillow. “Don’t worry, sir,” he said. “You are not.”


End file.
